A further 400 people came off the Live Register in March, bringing the number in receipt of benefits down to 174,500 on a seasonally-adjusted basis.
While the live register is an accurate measure of unemployment as people with part-time work can be entitled to benefits, it does broadly track trends in the labour market. The latest decrease, however, comes amid a pick-up in headline unemployment, which rose from 4.2 per cent to 4.3 per cent in March.
Of the 173,396 people on the unadjusted Live Register in March, the CSO said 54.6 per cent were male while almost 69 per cent were Irish nationals.
The agency said there were 21,237 people benefiting from the EU’s Temporary Protection Directive included in the register for March, a decrease of 757 people from the previous month.
The 35-44 age group made up the largest number at 40,797 people or 23.5 per cent of the total. The counties that saw the largest increase in the number of people signing on in the 12 months were Meath (10.6 per cent) and Laois (4.7 per cent).
The agency also noted the number of people on the Live Register for one year or more in March was 61,933, which was 215 more people (0.3 per cent) than a year earlier.
There were 111,463 people on the register for less than one year, which was 6,122 fewer people than in March last year.
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